nursing

Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing
http://fpb.cwru.edu/

From a summary submitted by former Dean Joyce Fitzpatrick and by former Assistant Dean Jeanne Novotny, a member of the University Committee on Distance Learning.

The Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing recognizes the challenges faced by many adult learners as they strive to advance their professional education while balancing the stresses of home, work and school. While the convenience of distance education is the answer for many, the logistics of providing this can be complex. For example, the varying shift schedules within the health care setting often impede a nurse's ability to take advantage of scheduled course transmissions. Also, the distribution of nurses across the nation is sporadic, so while one community may have a cluster of learners, it is not unusual for a given locale to be represented by one individual.

Access to educational opportunities is critical to a nurse's career development, and to adequate supply of university-prepared nurse specialists in specific regions of the country. To meet the educational needs of aspiring nurse professionals, the Bolton School has capitalized on the creativity of its faculty to offer a variety of distance learning education programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. As the Bolton School discovers innovative means to expand upon its distance learning programming, it continually broadens its access, instruction, and resources to make quality learning opportunities more available and convenient for its steadily growing student population.

Education Programs

As a World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Nursing, the School of Nursing recognizes a convergence toward a more global society. In addition to providing quality education experiences to students within the U.S., the Bolton School has extended its scope beyond local and national boundaries to reach students abroad.

Undergraduate

A Model for Transnational Education . With funding from the Walter Nord Program Faculty Grants for Innovative Academic Programming, the Bolton School is developing a pilot course in collaboration with international colleagues at Pontifica Universidad Catolica de Chile, with joint implementation slated for Fall 1997. Building upon the framework of an existing Bolton School course, the project will utilize CWRU's Electronic Learning Environment and the Internet to promote interactive and cooperative learning experiences for faculty and students from different world regions and cultures. Moving away from the traditional lecture format, faculty will apply Student Centered Learning techniques to guide students through the educational process, and use information technology as a teaching tool to foster the development of critical thinking and problem solving skills. This innovative nursing education model will use technology not only to access information, but also to initiate ongoing dialogue between schools of nursing globally, to conduct joint courses, and to engage in collaborative research to improve nursing both locally and abroad. Future plans for this transnational course may include the participation of universities from other countries as the Bolton School continues to expand its international relationships.

Graduate

Community-Based Nurse-Midwifery Education Program (CNEP). Initiated in 1988 by the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and the Frontier Nursing Service, this distance education program represents a collaborative endeavor with the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing, which is the oldest midwifery school in continuous existence in the U.S. and has over 800 graduates. Fully accredited by the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) and licensed by the Kentucky State Board of Education, CNEP offers students greater flexibility in graduate education for individuals who prefer independent study or who are unable to relocate to existing nurse-midwifery education settings.The education that students receive through CNEP is equivalent to the nurse-midwifery education at the Bolton School, and is recognized as such through a joint admission process. A “midwifery program without walls,” CNEP is a two-year self-directed, modular course that uses computer technology to enable the student to remain in his/her own community for both didactic and clinical education. Clinical preceptorships are conducted locally with participating nurse-midwives who meet criteria for quality education. An intensive semester format permits students to complete additional course work on campus for the MSN degree. Upon successful completion of the CNEP curriculum, students receive a Certificate in Nurse-Midwifery and are eligible to take the ACNM Certification Exam.

Master of Science in Nursing:A Distance Learning Program in Zimbabwe. With funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Bolton School is piloting a graduate nursing distance education program in collaboration with the Department of Nursing Science, University of Zimbabwe (UOZ). Since 1995, Bolton School faculty have been assisting UOZ to 1) develop and design a Master of Science in Nursing degree program which can be instituted via a distance learning model; 2) implement the distance learning program in two locations: one in Harare at UOZ and one at a remote site in Bulawayo; and 3) evaluate the two distance learning components to determine transferability of the model. Because of the limited availability of nursing periodicals in Zimbabwe, the Bolton School is exploring the possibility of providing UOZ nursing students access to CWRU library periodicals via computer technology. It is anticipated that a successful demonstration of the program at the two pilot sites will serve as a model by which graduate nursing education could be extended to additional regions of Zimbabwe, as well as to other countries.

Access, Instruction, and Resources

One of the goals of the School is to improve educational quality through appropriate use of technology. By incorporating the clinical uses of computers into nursing education, the intent is to greatly enhance the preparation of nursing students for the care of patients in today's “high stress / high tech” care settings.

Nursing Informatics. Nursing informatics is the use of information management in nursing education, nursing research, clinical practice and administration. As the first school in the U.S. to incorporate nursing informatics throughout all four years of the undergraduate core curriculum, the Bolton School program has become recognized as a national model. In each of the four years of the informatics curriculum, students are required to use the World Wide Web for research. They also have access to electronic patient records to the extent allowed by the policies and procedures of each clinical setting. To provide a broad perspective on the information resources available within the community, a full semester project mandates the use of the Cleveland Area Network for Data and Organizing, the Mandel School’s Violence Intervention Network, and the databases of the National Center for Health Statistics and the Center for Disease Control. Students must also produce a useable application to demonstrate the importance of technology within the health care setting. Examples of previous projects include website links to local hospitals, professional nursing organizations such as Sigma Theta Tau International, and other schools of nursing. When these students graduate, they are well versed in a variety of health care information resources, and know how to use them effectively to enhance patient care.

Computer-Aided Instruction. Computer-aided instruction programs are crucial to nursing students' ability to learn, simulate and practice their skills in preparation for the actual patients they will encounter in the clinical setting. Through these interactive modules, students test their decision making skills in situations which imitate the stress of real patient care. By administering user-focused learning sessions, students can key into the area of study in which they most need review, with or without the assistance of an instructor. While the CAI programs are administered through the Bolton School's clinical learning laboratory, these programs are also shared through a network of computer workstations as well as through the World Wide Web, allowing students' access from dormitories and other areas on campus.

Classroom of the Future . The Bolton School plans to create a state-of-the-art learning environment by transforming two existing classrooms into computerized learning centers linked to the CWRU fiber optic network. Through this interactive learning environment, faculty and students will be able to access resources within other schools on campus, as well as data banks across the nation. Rather than repeating live presentations, didactic lectures could be videotaped for review at a later time in the lecture hall, or recalled by individual students “after hours” in small workstations. This supplemental learning structure would give faculty more time to apply individual attention to the students most in need, while allowing students the flexibility to pursue course work reinforcement sessions on their own time. A grant from Centerior Energy Foundation has provided initial funding to launch this project. The Bolton School plans to continue the development of the Classroom of the Future in a manner congruent with the mission of the university.

Scenarios

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